Seabee served on Attu Island

Friday

May 17, 2013 at 10:21 AM

Seabee helped extend runways in Alaska during World War II.

By LESTER DE JONGEas told to ABBY WEINGARTEN

Lester De Jonge was working in a machine shop in his hometown of Allendale, Mich., when he was drafted into the Navy in 1943. He became a Seabee with the 8th Special Battalion, known as "Grimslid's Gang," during World War II, and traveled to Alaska on a troop transport ship. For two years on Attu Island, De Jonge and his unit lived in Quonset huts and helped develop a base. After he was discharged in early 1946, De Jonge started a company called De Jonge Excavating, which his son, Henry, currently runs. Now 90, he lives in Nokomis with his wife of 64 years, Mildred.

'I arrived in Attu with 500 of our men in the latter part of August. Attu had been taken back from the Japanese in May. Our forces were very powerful and had wiped them out in no time, so the work of establishing a base there began immediately. The Army was not interested in developing the base, so that was left to the Navy Seabees.

It was very crude there. We stayed in tents and the mess hall was just a long tent. There was a lot of confusion in those days. For one thing, the butter on our tables contained a large amount of beeswax because that butter was intended to be shipped to the South Pacific, but we got a hold of it. I can remember that they used that butter to grease the skids of the pile drivers; that's how they used it up.

We got into our Quonset huts in about November 1943 and stayed there for two years.

The 8th Special Battalion was to receive the liberty ships carrying the cargo, and that included barrels of oil, equipment, metal, ammunition, torpedoes and lumber for building the base. We had ammunition and torpedoes to supply the submarines that were out in the Pacific.

The 68th Construction Battalion also was there, and they built the airport and the runways. They used a lot of dynamite, so we were handling dynamite and it was very dangerous work. Attu did not have a space long enough to operate a B-25 bomber, so we had to blast the foot of the mountain away. The goods taken out of those blasts were dumped into the bay to get the airport runway long enough. That work went on seven days a week and never stopped. We were on 12-hour shifts seven days a week.

When the bombers took off, they had fuel tanks fastened on the wings so they could make the trips.

I remember seeing one B-25 take off, and when it got only partway down the runway, it caught on fire and the pilot steered it off the runway and got out of the plane. He walked away from it.

One time, at our chow hall, in the morning, they announced by the PA system that one bomber came back on one engine from a raid. This pilot of that B-25 knew he was in serious trouble and put that thing into a dive and got all the speed he could and leveled off just above the ocean floor and made it back to Attu. Those were the kinds of things that happened there.

We only had one raid on Attu, and we were very fortunate in that way.

That happened about sundown. I remember, it had to be in 1944, and it was a rainy night. All of a sudden, we were under attack and I stepped out of the Quonset hut and the sky looked just like a Fourth of July celebration.

The report was that the Japanese did not drop any bombs. Some people disagreed with that, however, because they could point to holes in the ground big enough to bury a Jeep."

Abby Weingarten may be contacted via email at Abby_Weingarten@yahoo.com.